Broadcast network content or programming is commonly provided in conjunction with associated informational content or assets. These assets include advertisements, associated programming, public-service announcements, ad tags, trailers, weather or emergency notifications and a variety of other content, including paid and unpaid content. In this regard, assets providers (e.g., advertisers) who wish to convey information (e.g., advertisements) regarding services and/or products to users of the broadcast network often pay for the right to insert their information into programming of the broadcast network. For instance, advertisers may provide ad content to a network operator such that the ad content may be interleaved with broadcast network programming during one or more programming breaks. The delivery of such paid assets often subsidizes or covers the costs of the programming provided by the broadcast network. This may reduce or eliminate costs borne by the users of the broadcast network programming.
In order to achieve a better return on their investment, asset providers often try to target their assets to a selected audience that is believed to be interested in the goods or services of the asset provider. The case of advertisers on a cable television network is illustrative. For instance, an advertiser or a cable television network may target its ads to certain demographic groups based on, for example, geographic location, gender, age, income etc. Accordingly, once an advertiser has created an ad that is targeted to a desired group of viewers (e.g., targeted group) the advertiser may attempt to procure insertion times in the network programming when the targeted group is expected to be among the audience of the network programming.
Historically, broadcast content (e.g., programming) is provided from a content provider (e.g., ABC, PBS, BBC, etc.) to one or more network platforms (e.g., regional head end and/or local head ends and/or repeater stations). These network platforms receive the content and disseminate that content to network users. In this regard, the broadcast content is sometimes termed a “national feed.” Typically, this national feed includes programming and interleaved advertisements. In this regard, national level advertisers who wish to disseminate their assets network-wide may pay to have their advertisements interleaved with the programming of the national feed. Accordingly, when the network platforms disseminate the broadcast content received via the national feed, the interleaved assets/advertisements are disseminated therewith. That is, interleaving of assets/advertisements with the national feed typically results in a single asset/advertisement being disseminated over the entire broadcast network.
In some broadcast networks (e.g., such as those in the United States), one or more cues may also be incorporated into the national feed. Such cues have allowed network platforms (e.g., local head ends) to identify upcoming breaks in the programming contained in the national feed. Accordingly, such local head ends may replace content within the national feed with an asset that is better suited for a local audience. Typically, in the United States, two to three minutes of every half-hour are set aside for local advertisements. However, other broadcast networks, including many foreign networks, do not provide local insertion opportunities. In this regard, all advertising in such networks is network-wide.